Everyone knew that the time was getting close for liberation because
we had news via the partisans that liberation was near. Everyone wanted
so badly to stay alive, to survive, to tell the story. We did our best
but, of course, everyone's life was a matter of destiny. In the summer
you could gather some berries and some mushrooms, there was more to live
on. Many of us had a lot of frostbite. One of the deadlier illnesses was
caused by malnutrition. We all developed boils. Huge, huge boils the size
of a quarter, all over your body. I was covered with these boils and the
partisans were trying to get different babsky remedies from the farmer
lto combat it. After we were liberated, I was examined by a Russian doctor
and he told us to eat lots of
butter. Sure enough, the boils disappeared
completely. I have only two tiny marks left, but a lot of people, to this
day, have big blue marks left from those boils.

One day, a young man and I were chosen to go and bring water. As we
were about to put our pails into the river, I heard familiar sounds. I
heard Russian singing. I said to this fellow, "Joe, that sounds like
Russian to me. These are not Germans. I think this is the Red Army."
He said, "No, you can never tell." He was smart. There could
be tricks. So we started to crawl closer to the area where the voices were
coming from and sure enough, I saw they were Russian men in uniforms with
their field kitchens. They took one look at us and we looked at them and
they burst out crying. They started to embrace me because I was just a
little girl. They kept asking a million questions, about where we came
from and how we survived. They were very, very kind and they were trying
to give us everything, but we were so excited; we kept pulling them over
to our area where we were hidden, so that everyone could see that it's
not a mirage, that it's really happening. We did bring them back with us
to the forest and there, lo and behold, everyone saw for themselves that
these were not German officers, but the Red Army.

After they were liberated Evelyn's mother searched for other survivors
of the family, but in vain. The three women and two child survivors made
their way to Lodz, Poland, where they lived with other Jewish survivors,
and where they again suffered anti-Semitism, this time from the Poles.
Evelyn's mother arranged for them to cross the border into Germany. Evelyn's
Jewish education, which began in Lods, resumed, and she fondly remembers
her activities in the Betar Zionist group and the Zionist ideals with which
she was imbued. They finally emigrated and joined distant relatives in
the United States. Evelyn married Leon Kahn, a fellow Partisan from Ejszyszki,
and they now live in Vancouver, Canada.